My mum recently reminded me of a wonderful quotation, "I am sorry to have wearied you with so long a letter but I did not have time to write you a short one," which has apparently been attributed to the 17th century French mathematician and philosopher Blaise Pascal.
What I like about it is the counterintuitive notion that it can sometimes take longer to be brief - a thought that applies equally to writing letters and writing fiction. It can be relatively easy to dash off a rambling page or two, where everything comes pouring out with barely a pause for thought. To craft a supple paragraph in which each word earns its place can take a little more time, as you need to shape it carefully, honing and pruning all the while.
I suppose it boils down to the tension between quality and quantity. My average word count is something in the region of eight hundred words a day: on a good day I can write as many fourteen hundred, on a bad, I'm down to a measly four hundred, but I am always driven by they wish to write well, rather than the wish to write lots.
Writing time is a precious commodity, hard won (or stolen), but making the most of it doesn't necessarily mean producing page after page of fairly mediocre stuff. Three hundred words that you are really pleased with and which still look good when you reread them the following day, can be infinitely more satisfying.
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